gratification and the moral turpitude connected therewith than that which seems right to a generation grown serious by reason of higher aims and nobler struggles. It need not here be discussed how far manners and opinions which change with the times are to be regarded as absolute morality; the point we are proving is undeniable, and is apparent, often painfully so, in all the light literature and memoirs of the day. Caroline Pichler writes in reference to this very period:[8]-- {MORAL TENDENCY OF FIGARO.} (81) There prevailed a taste for all that was beautiful and pleasant in Vienna at that time. The mind had freer movement than at present, and anything might be written and printed which was not in the strictest sense of the word contrary to religion and the state. There was not nearly so much stress laid upon _good manners_. Plays and romances of a tolerably free tendency were admitted and discussed in good society. Kotzebue was very much thought of. His pieces, as well as Gemmingen's "Deutscher Hausvater," Schroder's "Ring," and many others which are sunk in oblivion, together with a number of tales and romances (Meissner's sketches above all) were founded on indecent subjects. They were read without scruple or concealment by all the world, and every young girl. I myself saw and read them all repeatedly; "Oberon" I knew well, and Meissner's "Alcibiades." No mother felt any scruple at allowing her daughter to become acquainted with such works; and indeed living examples of what we read moved before us with so little concealment of their irregular and immoral doings, that it would not have been possible for any mother to keep her daughter in ignorance on these points. It is sufficient to refer to the reading of Wieland's works. What can be more repugnant to our ideas than to find a young girl writing to her lover:-- I hope you will soon get the new "Amadis"; it is the funniest, most whimsical book. I wonder how you will like Olinda! Master Amadis is a little too like butter--he melts in every sunbeam. Our wonder increases when we reflect that this young girl is Caroline Flachsland, and her lover is Herder.[9] There can be no doubt that in this respect Mozart was a child of his time; that he willingly allowed himself to glide along the pleasant stream of life in Vienna, and that his merrier moods were often productive of free and even coarse jests. The frivolous element in Beaumarchais' comedy was not, therefore, likely to repel him, although it would be unfair to assert that it mainly attracted him; he accepted it, as others did, as the sauce which was most likely to be of acceptable flavour. His chief concern was doubtless the gradual unfolding and continual interest of the plot, and the graphic delineation of character, qualities which were entirely overlooked by the ordinary opera buffa. Any approach to probability or analogy with actual life was not thought of, and was {LE NOZZE DI FIGARO.} (82)